


The Voyage of Discovery

by shinealightrose



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M, Transatlantic AU, early 20th century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 18:38:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5344418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightrose/pseuds/shinealightrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sehun meets his would-be professor on a voyage across the sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Voyage of Discovery

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Slight age gap, eventual student/teacher relationship, legal consenting age, brief groping

Two weeks already on this ship and Sehun is pretty sure he knows every nook and cranny. It's a large ocean liner, state of the art according to the seamen who staff it, and upon first glance it was an absolute wonder. It still is, technically speaking. Three giant smoke funnels more than the height of twelve men put together. Countless decks for strolling, sitting, eating, smoking, snoozing, walking pets, or else for just showing off. So many places to explore, but beyond the service decks, Sehun is not allowed. Pity.

There are a lot of people sailing, Sehun notices, who seem to enjoy traveling just for the hell of it. Sehun, however, isn't traveling just to popularize the shape of his new, modern hairstyle (fashionably upswept with a curl above his brows). He is nineteen, enrolled into a prestigious boys' college across the seas, and he probably won't see his parents again until he graduates. His mother and father, brother and baby sister all saw him off at the dock, father waving stoically, mother in tears behind her embroidered handkerchief, brother tearing up but hiding his impending loneliness and his sister just snoozed in her perambulator. Sehun was sorry to see their tiny forms shrinking against the horizon, but a new life waited. 

He didn't really expect his new life to begin while still on board. He didn't really expect to meet a man who would change his life. ”Sehun?”

The light touch to the small of his back brings a smile to his face. He doesn’t know if it really should, but he can’t help it. 

“Professor?” he chuckles amiably, teasingly, without looking back. There’s a small chance that Professor Do may end up as one of his teachers after they embark, but the eight-year older man doesn’t mention it much. 

“Please…” he begins to say, and something in Sehun’s gut feels like shriveling at the sad sound of the man’s voice. “Please, I asked you… don’t call me that.”

Sehun hangs his head and apologizes, carefully rearranging his elbows on the rail of the bow of the ship. Some days he gets tired of being at sea, but somehow he never grows bored of the way the waters part and ripple as the ship makes its way through. He knows through diagrams that below the surface of the water, the ocean liner displaces even more water than Sehun could possibly imagine, and it excites him: below the surface could be a whole world that they’ll never see disturbed by their presence alone, tiny figures sailing upon a massive ocean. 

Kyungsoo never looks at the ocean for long, and Sehun gets the feeling that if he spoke his thoughts aloud, that Kyungsoo would not enjoy the notion of disturbing anything below. He’s always dressed to blend in, speaks only to blend in. He breakfasts at the smaller tables on purpose to avoid small talk, and never partakes of the enjoyable entertainment put on to amuse the passengers. He’s not traveling for the purpose of enjoyment. He’s not even like Sehun, a new face in a new world. Kyungsoo has been here before, sailed this before, when he was not much older than Sehun, if the partial story he told him is to be believed. 

‘The sea, it was a beautiful thing my first voyage out.’ 

‘But now?’ Sehun had asked. 

‘Now?’ The smile on Kyungsoo’s face was bitter. ‘Now it’s as stale as the country we come from. No longer bubbling with the longing of the new world, but reeking of the hopes and dreams of everyone who comes.’ 

It’s disgusting, says his expression, if not his words. And that hurts Sehun. He wonders what he reeks of: hopes of dreams, or the stale smell of the old country? Or both? And if he does reek, figuratively, why then does Kyungsoo bother? 

Kyungsoo has sailed this voyage before, twice going, and once returning home. Sehun though is sailing forward to something new; Kyungsoo is going back to what he left behind. 

“What are your quarters like, at the university? Better, worse, than the students’?”  Sehun’s best chance at drawing him out is with mindless banter like this. Kyungsoo never answers any questions deeper than the courses he teaches: math. 

“Definitely better than whatever hole you will live in.” The professor smiles, and Sehun holds in the swell of victory when Kyungsoo adds his elbows to the rail right next to Sehun’s. He continues watching the patterns of the waves, while Kyungsoo stares off into the distance, and there’s no one to interrupt them or remind them of mealtimes except for a few strangers strolling behind them who probably won’t speak to them anyway. This deck is one of the less crowded ones. Sehun chose it specifically for Kyungsoo. 

“I have two adjoining rooms. And a small garden,” he elaborates, eyes still drawn to the cloud formations in the horizon. “Cramped, but I make do. And the campus is beautiful. You will enjoy it there.” 

“You mean I’ll enjoy a dorm tower with ten other students who snore at night?” Sehun laughs in spite of himself. Student life: he’s been trying to imagine it forever. If it’s anything like the prissy prep school his parents sent him to, then this must be similar. Only Sehun has seen what supposed scholars look like. Academics, and their pupils. His father was a learned man, always inviting such men home to dinner and the conversation had been so dry and dull. They’d treated Sehun like a child, and even though he’d bristled, he grew up wanting to be just as educated but determined not to become so droll. 

They weren’t anything like Kyungsoo though, soft smiles between intelligent discussions; a comforting, pleasant feel, eyes that sparkled even through the darkness. A darkness that he himself barred from the world. 

If there were more scholars like Kyungsoo in the world, Sehun looked forward to school life a bit more. Perhaps though, it was just Kyungsoo, and that was a nagging, persistent thought born from the back of his mind one day until it grew and grew and covered up everything else; that Sehun looks forward to the next four years for namely one reason. 

 ”Can… can I still come and visit with you? When we get there?” 

And Sehun knows he shouldn’t have asked; Kyungsoo is already adamant about what could or should not be, once they get there. Once they come to an end. 

Kyungsoo clams up before his very eyes, mouth turning stern, fists clutching the rail, and for the first time since he joined him on deck, he dares a glance down towards the tepid, storming waters of the ocean. 

“I share my rooms with another professor. I think that answer, as I’ve told you before, is no.” 

No? But that’s not how he acted last night… 

Sehun opens his mouth to protest, even though he knows it’s fruitless. In a sense, he’s always known. That he finds Kyungsoo more intriguing than the man sees him. How Sehun is potentially the means through which Kyungsoo passes the time, the key to helping him forget.  It won’t last, and he’s always known that. Kyungsoo is using him. That’s a stale, painful truth, one Sehun wishes he didn’t have to acknowledge, because he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. If only he minded more, if only it disturbed him more. The problem though is that it doesn’t. Not yet. Not when the temporary solution is that he can spend more time with Kyungsoo. 

Sehun is so lost in the  _now_ , he refuses to think about  _then, later, and so forth_. Later on, Kyungsoo won’t care about him. He’ll just be another student, another fresh face around campus but he won’t mean anything to him then, just as he doesn’t mean anything to Kyungsoo now. Not really. 

“And besides.” 

He barely hears Kyungsoo’s next words. 

“You’ll be so busy once the term begins. Meeting friends of your own age. You’ll forget all about me too, Sehun.” 

Will he though? He doesn’t know if he will, or if he even wants to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s a porter who watches with judging eyes when Kyungsoo opens up the door to his room and lets Sehun inside. Sehun knows that stare; it’s the look of disgust mixed with intrigue. He saw it the first time Kyungsoo invited him inside wearing just his underclothes—long britches and a thin cotton shirt—so Sehun doesn’t doubt the all the crew on this part of this ship suspect a sexual relationship. Sehun almost suspects it himself. Instead… 

“Sehun, you’re early. I ordered dinner in. And there's already tea made. Make yourself comfortable.” 

Kyungsoo treats him intimately, but never once has he actually touched him. For hours every night Kyungsoo lets him sprawl over his bed, shoulders touching, elbows colliding, pillows disoriented as they pour of works of literature that Kyungsoo—the mathematician—still finds fascinating. They talk about the world and their home country, culture at large, and never once broach the more personal aspects of their own family or lives. 

Sehun feels like a prized pupil, picking his professor’s brains, soaking in his knowledge of geography or complicated mathematical theorems, and it doesn’t matter to him that some of it is beyond his scope of comprehension. Kyungsoo, when in intellect-mode, is a fascinating person to observe. All the worries of the world wipe clean from his face, his brows furrow in concentration, sparks of light flitting from his eyes as he shares his world. And Sehun laps it up, laps up the attention too. 

When they first met shipside, Sehun had no idea who he was or what he did. He was still fighting to find his sea legs, his stomach a bit woozy from the churn of the boat. Kyungsoo was his unwilling hero when Sehun threw up inches from the older man's shoes, Kyungsoo who looked about to belch from second-hand nausea. He called over a porter and supervised cleaning Sehun up, then sat with him for a couple hours in the shade of a quieter deck, plying him with water and tales of his travels, short inquiries about why Sehun was alone on the ship and where he was going. Kyungsoo shared only a few hours after that he taught at the very school for which Sehun was destined. By then though, Sehun was hopelessly lost and totally enamored with the older man and the stories he told, the things he liked and disliked, and the intense, comfortable way in which Kyungsoo make him feel important. He was so unlike the stuffy old intellects Sehun had met through his father. Kyungsoo inspired him, whereas the others were revolting. Perhaps this difference alone was how Sehun came to love him.

 “You’ll make a good scholar you know,” Kyungsoo tells him late into the night. The remains of their dinner are pushed away on their tray. Sehun’s pant legs are bunched up to his ankles from twisting so much on the bed, Kyungsoo’s arm rests across the tops of his shoulders. 

“Why do you say that?” Sehun preens even as he second-guesses himself. 

“Because you’re a good listener,” Kyungsoo compliments him with a bemused, almost impressed smile. 

The grin on Sehun’s face falls just a little bit. He listens because to him, Kyungsoo is amazing. Kyungsoo is smart and mature and funny when he wants to be, attractive when he’s on fire about something that interests him. And Sehun likes him. But he wants to be liked in return. 

“You’re a good teacher,” he responds, earnestly looking at Kyungsoo’s face. “You should tutor me forever. I’ll be your prodigy, Professor.” 

The face he sees back though is frighteningly close, direct, and intimate. It’s also afraid. Sehun said that word, the one Kyungsoo doesn’t like, the reminder of how their roles are defined by the world, how they’ll be defined explicitly once they disembark. 

“I told you don’t—” 

“Don’t call you that, I know,” Sehun whines, feeling suddenly all of his eighteen years, and how much much older Kyungsoo feels in comparison. “But, Kyungsoo… why do you…” 

“Why do I what?” Kyungsoo swallows heavily, the tone of his voice shallow. 

“Why do you…”  _treat me like a lover_ , Sehun wants to ask. Why, in such a short amount of time after one accidental meeting, did two strangers like them come together, and why did Kyungsoo let him into his life? 

“You should go back to your room,” the man says now, already pulling away. “It’s getting late.” 

“Noooo.” 

Kyungsoo hesitates. “What?” as if he can’t believe Sehun is defying him. 

“I mean, don’t shut me out,” Sehun rushes to explain. “You always do this. You talk and talk for hours, but the moment the subject changes you shut up and toss me away. Is that… is that all you think of me?” 

“Sehun I don’t—” he protests. 

“Don’t what? Treat me like a child?” Sehun’s anxiety is starting to get the best of him. “That’s what you do though. ‘Sehun, let’s talk about this.’ ‘Sehun, come sit on the bed.’ ‘Sehun, here try this food.’” He stops a moment to breathe deeply, and then goes on, Kyungsoo’s eyes turning colder but wider the more he speaks. “Do you just want someone to impress upon? Because you don’t have to try so hard. I like you. I think you’re great. But what’s wrong with seeing you after this voyage ends? Why do you always tell me that? What’s so finite about spending time with you, like this?” 

Kyungsoo gulps, watching the motion of Sehun’s hand which indicates their positions. The bed’s a mess, pillows propped up behind their backs from where they recline against it, books spread out. Before even, they had their legs entwined. 

“Sehun, I…” 

But Sehun huffs instead. “If you’re going to use me, then at least do that properly, huh?” 

“What?” 

Sehun runs a hand through his bangs and looks imploringly at Kyungsoo’s face. 

“I said, I like you. Don’t you at least like me too? Just a little bit?” 

There's real confusion in Kyungsoo's eyes, but only for a moment. Then comes recognition, and Sehun would scream out loud if he thought that would help move things along. Kyungsoo, surely, knows how this could go. Sehun is young, but even he gets it. And no one, not even a twenty-six year old math professor could miss it, how Kyungsoo treats him, touches him, lightly, safely, so safe. Too safe for Sehun's liking. He wants to tip the scales, and so he does. 

Before Kyungsoo can say or respond, Sehun leans forward, inhaling slightly as he captures the other's lips between his own. Beyond that, he's scared. Kyungsoo doesn't move into the kiss, but neither does he move away, both of them shell-shocked by Sehun's sudden declaration. Even Sehun doesn't know what to do next. They hang where they are, chastely kissing, nothing moving. Until Kyungsoo sighs then he responds. There's hunger laced in his hesitant kiss, but a hand comes around the back of Sehun's neck to hold him there. Sehun moans in approval and clamors to get closer. They're already lying down. It takes barely a few adjustments until they're laying side by side, arms entangled, kissing desperately, and there's a slow blaze starting to burn in Sehun's lower regions that he can't quite ignite before of the angle of their legs. He groans louder, kisses harder, tries to find something to rut against and settles on finding Kyungsoo's hand. 

The older man squeaks unattractively when Sehun presses his hand to his crotch, urging him to take over, urging him to touch, feel, and take. And it feels momentous, getting this far at last. He pulls back to breathe, arches his back, and dives in for another kiss. Leaving Kyungsoo's fingers to trace his hardening length through his clothes, Sehun sighs and wraps his arms around and against Kyungsoo. His thighs tremble, hips pressing close; Kyungsoo alternately groans and gasps, and Sehun lets his fingers dance across the small of his back, looking for skin, looking for the waistband of Kyungsoo's pants.

He finds it, but it's then that Kyungsoo jolts away.

“No! I can't... we can't...”

Kyungsoo scrambles away, and Sehun remains in shock. Tears burn at the corner of his eyes. His body is tingling, his brain confused, but his heart registers rejection, and that's all he needs before he climbs off the bed in the opposite direction, grabs his coat off the back of the door and flies from the room. The wind whips cruelly through his hair, salt spray lingering heavily in the air, but he doesn't cry until he reaches his room and then the floodgates open. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two weeks on this ship, and the voyage is already two-thirds of the way through. Sehun spends the last week alone. He doesn't see Kyungsoo, doesn't look for the man; he tries not even to think about the man. He's alone once more, just as he was for the first couple days, hating life. The newness and magic of the voyage is gone, every great thing he looked forward to, gone. Now all he has to look forward to is four or more years of university life sharing a campus with a professor who didn't want to be with him, who might never acknowledge him again.

He meets another student a few days from the shore. Kris is young, and like him, shy and reticent. He doesn't know how to converse with people well, but after several weeks of doing nothing but  _talking_ , Sehun doesn't mind. He's made his first official friend for when he arrives at school, but no matter how many times he calls him friend in his mind, Sehun can't bear to open up his self or even more than the barest bits of his mind. He can't- he won't- do that again. They spend most the remaining days in the dining room or walking around the decks, and then Sehun returns to his room to mope in silence.

“Sehun, can we-” Kyungsoo says to him on the docks. Sehun sweeps right by him as if he's not there. He walks in Kris' shadow down the pier, taking in the final glimpses of the ocean liner which brought him here to this new phase of his life and Kyungsoo isn't a part of that, not anyore. He breathes in the first scent of a new world and resigns himself to moving on, as if the voyage had never happened. It's easy to not look back when all around him are the signs of humanity scurrying about: families waiting to greet their relatives, cars and carriages lining every side of the road, working men and boys running behind travelers pushing or carrying their trunks. Sehun grabs onto Kris' elbow when the other student spots a sign pointing towards the train station. If Kyungsoo boards the same train in another car, Sehun doesn't bother to find out. 

 

 

 

 

 

He sees him every now and then, a diminutive professor in plain looking tweeds, shabby compared to many of the other staff. Sometimes their eyes catch, and before Sehun darts away, he sees something sad in the man's eyes, hope that became lost. Maybe Sehun's reflect something of that too, but as the years draw by he's getting good at not dwelling on that. He throws himself into his studies, he respects most of his teachers, he makes friends of his own age just as Kyungsoo once said he would. Somehow he never ends up with the teacher himself. Perhaps Kyungsoo wisely arranged that, and Sehun is grateful. 

Only once does Sehun end up near the teachers' quarters. It's how he accidentally comes across the rows of cottages that Kyungsoo described, tiny homes with gardens out front. Kyungsoo grows roses, that's the only thought Sehun has. Kyungsoo grows roses. Sehun topples down the lane where students aren't supposed to be, two dorm mates on either elbow as they wallow along singing, drunk from too much spirits. He stops in his tracks when he sees the crouched form of the professor who once captured his every imagination. He's squatting in the dirt, pruning sheers in hand, and he stands up with a sigh, ready to scold the out of bed students when he spots Sehun among them. His friends begin to squabble; Sehun feels himself turning pale.

“Cripes, it's the math professor!” one of them squeaks. 

“Chanyeol? Junmyeon?” Kyungsoo squares his shoulders and look reproving. Both boys freak out, apologies spewing from their lips, begging forgiveness and they'll never do this again. Kyungsoo smiles wryly, tells them he'll overlook it just this once if they return quickly to their beds. All the while Sehun stands between them, his mind reeling just enough from the alcohol to remember a different kind of shame entirely. Kyungsoo hasn't even acknowledged him. Does he even remember his name, or is all that so far gone in the past?

“We're going!” Junmyeon cries anew, “Goodnight professor!” and they about-face with Sehun still attached, marching away.

 

“Goodnight,” Kyungsoo calls after them. “Goodnight... Sehun.”

Sehun finds out over the next few weeks more about the professor than he'd learned on those few short weeks. Chanyeol, if only he'd asked, was a wellspring of knowledge. 

“His wife and kid died a few years ago, didn't you know? I heard it from Baekhyun who overheard Professor Lu and Professor Zhang talking once, and  _they_  said he came here about five years ago by himself. He was going to work for a few years and then go home with a lot of money, but they both died while he was away. He only went back to bury them, and supposedly...” Chanyeol's voice lowers to a conspiratorial whisper, “he found out that she'd been cheating on him with another man before she died! Can you believe it?! Poor Professor Do...”

“Sounds like a lot of tall tales and a rumors,” Junmyeon pouts. “Besides, you believe everything Baekhyun says?”

“I don't know, but I asked Minseok who's studying closely with the professors in the math department, and he hinted about the same. I swear, Junmyeon, it's true!”

Sehun's stomach revolts while he listens to them talk, and while there's nothing he wants to add to their gossip, he's torn between wanting to know more and not wanting to have learned about the professor at all. 

_His wife and kid died a few years ago... he only went back to bury them..._

Sehun throws up his dinner behind a tree a little while later, cleans himself up and for a moment he remembers the gentle, genuine hands of the man who took him under his wing for just the barest hint of a time. He misses him. He really liked him. He really wanted to grow close to him. But Sehun also knows that he's too much of a coward now, and that Kyungsoo wouldn't have wanted to acknowledge him now anyways. Not Sehun, not a student like him. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He only approaches him a few years later. Somewhere near the entry gates is his trunk and suitcases waiting to be transported, his cap and gown stowed away for safekeeping. Kyungsoo hasn't changed, not since Sehun first met him over six years ago. 

“Professor,” he says staunchly, looking down at the man who peers up at him from the doorway of his cottage. Sehun grins in spite of himself. 

“Sehun?” Kyungsoo blinks and rubs his eyes, as if he can't believe what they're seeing. 

Sehun grins even wider. “I came back. Did you hear?”

The old man doesn't look surprised at the news. Rather, a little shocked that Sehun is standing here in particular, speaking to him. 

“I heard, yes. Assistant professor in the languages department, congratulations. How was... how was your trip back home?”

“Not as eventful as the first time, when we sailed together.”

Kyungsoo swallows uneasily, eyes starting to dart around awkwardly. “Ahh, I see... and, and... you'll be living...?”

“A few cottages over. Minseok still has a spare room.”

“I see,” Kyungsoo repeats. “W-welcome home. Would you... like to come in and have some tea?”

“I would actually. Kyungsoo.”

 


End file.
